This invention relates to means for supporting the secondary buses that couple a transformer with an electric furnace.
In electric furnace installations, the high amperage supply transformer for the furnace electrodes is usually located in a room or vault so as to isolate the transformer from the furnace room. Conventional practice is to extend the heavy copper bus bars leading from the tansformer terminals through the wall of the vault and to support the bus bars from the wall. For various reasons, including assuring that forces incidental to a transformer failure will not be propagated to the furnace room and for noise isolation, the walls of the transformer room or vault are made of concrete containing steel reinforcing bars. As is known a strong magnetic field exists around the bus bars when they are conducting high current. This induces eddy currents in the reinforcing steel of the wall which results in heating of the steel and concomitant dissipation of electric power. Consequently, concrete walls for transformer vaults are often reinforced with stainless steel rods which have low magnetic susceptibility. Stainless steel reinforcing rods, however, do not have the protuberances that are ordinarily present on steel reinforcing rod. Hence, smooth stainless steel rod does not produce strong reinforcement.
Conventionally, the brackets for supporting the bus bars are supported on the wall itself. Besides the magnetic induction problems which this creates, vibratory forces incident to the flow of alternating current of rapidly changing amplitudes, are transmitted to the vault wall such that wall degradation and noise are produced.